Disposable, fenestrated surgical drapes are well-known in the medical industry. An example is U.S. Pat. No. 4,401,942.
These fenestrated drapes are often quite large in size so as to completely cover the patient and drape down the sides of the operating table to prevent bacterial contamination of the patient. Because of the numerous sizes and shapes of fenestrations needed for different types of surgical procedures, a hospital must stock a tremendous amount of surgical drapes.
Most fenestrated drapes in the past have been made of a single material so that the highly repellent material adjacent the fenestration was used throughout the entire drape, including those portions hanging down the sides of the operating room table. The liquid repellent coating or laminated sheet on the drape material that hung down from the sides of the operating room table caused it to be stiffer and less drapeable than desired. Also, it increased the cost of the total drape to make it entirely liquid repellent in order to get the liquid repellency adjacent the fenestration.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,882,859 has proposed permanently securing a rubber sheet across a very large opening of a surgical drape. The rubber sheet is then split for the surgical incision. However, the rubber sheet does not have a preshaped fenestration. It is simply cut at the time of surgery.
Another U.S. Pat. No. 4,024,862 has a series of smaller drapes on top of a main drape. Each smaller drape has progressively larger fenestrations. Thus, during a surgical procedure if a larger fenestration is needed, the top drape is simply peeled off and discarded. However, since all drapes are preassembled by the manufacturer, this does not solve the large inventory problem required to get a specific drape with an oval fenestration, as shown in 39' in FIG. 9. The purpose of this patent is simply to provide a drape that does not need to be cut during surgery to enlarge the fenestration.